> The LISTPROC product was under development at that time, and we went
> with the only product available that would meet our needs.  When L-Soft
> did announce a unix product, and then quickly stepped up the production
> cycle on it to compete with the CREN ListProcessor, I considered the
> relative merits of both products and considered licensing the L-Soft
> one.  But the reality is, for the price, the ListProcessor is a better
> product for my company.  The cost/benefit analysis for LISTSERV vs.
> LISTPROC isn't even close.  I *have* looked at it.
 
I'll try to contribute something useful here, rather than just
continuing the flame war.
 
When we decided that we has to move away from the VM system that our
LISTSERV was running on, I did think about both listproc from CREN and
Unix LISTSERV.  The NT LISTSERV wasn't available then, or we would have
considered that too.  What really decided things for me was the
compatibility between the different versions of LISTSERV.  With
listproc the conversion would have been even more painful than it was
because of the list owner reeducation that would have been required.
Of course, not everyone is in our situation.
 
The reality is that, while LISTSERV costs more than listproc, the price
difference is negligible considering the other costs that go into
running a list server.  For us, the major cost is not the software and
not the hardware, it is the people time required to support it.  And
that's not just Greg's time to maintain the machine and the software
(and some of mine to deal with problems), it's the people who interface
with the list owners and users, produce documentation, answer
questions, etc.  It's also the list owners and users themselves.  I
don't see how people costs would be noticeably less with another list
server.  Anything that L-Soft, or anyone else, can do to reduce that
cost significantly, I think is worthwhile.  One thing is the
documentation that is slowly becoming available.  Another is the
automatic Delivery Status Notification handling that is coming in 1.8c
(we have the beta).  DSNs are the new Internet standard for the format
of bounce messages (also supported by the lastest version of Unix
sendmail).  Bounce messages are the bane of list owners.  Yet another
is WWW interfaces to make LISTSERV easier to use.